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The silkscreen is printed in two colors: gray, for the notation marks which replicate graphite, and gold. The left pane of the composition shows three columns, two running the full height of the picture plane and the third only about one-fifth of the other columns. The gilt ink obliterates most of the notations in the three columns with numbers that are visible immediately to the right. These are not meaningful to the casual observer, although they most certainly fit in with Beuys’s style of drawing, which the critic Arthur Danto describes as “unmistakably his, blobs and blots in sepia or brown, on throwaway paper, and connected by some desultory scribbled lines.” [1]
On the right side appears a column of words and phrases in German, most illegible, due to Beuys’s uneven handwriting. Examples of legible words are: Pilze, buch, pelt, Eichel, felsen, fels which translate as fungi, book, pelt, acorn, rock, cliff. These allude to aspects of the physical world, which was central to Beuys’s education, art production, and sociopolitical consciousness. The irascible critic Robert Hughes said of the artist, “His obsessive interest in shamanism and the invocation of animal totems—hare, bee, stag, and the like, scribbled out in countless drawings, molded in wax, and scratched on slate—has much more to do with the pantheism of earlier twentieth-century northern romantics like Klee or Franz Marc than it does with real anthropology, despite Beuys’s insistence on the need for an ‘anthropological’ art which could give ordinary human actions the character of ritual.” [2]
Beuys signed his name and annotated the print directly on the lower right of the image. Presumably the other signatures, found on the right side of the image, were printed: his initials J. b [sic], his full name “Joseph Beuys: Quanten 1945,” which gives title to the image, below which is written “to John Cage with love and admiration. Joseph.” “Quanten” translated from German means quantum, the smallest amount of energy, an indirect allusion to the atomic bomb. It was in 1945 that Germany surrendered and Beuys became a prisoner of war in England.
Joseph Beuys met and became aware of the work of the American avant-garde composer John Cage through the Fluxus art group, specifically through the artist Nam June Paik, in the early 1960s. Paik was still a composer when he attended a 1958 John Cage performance in Darmstadt, which would prove transformative for him; afterwards he would emerge as a performance artist. Although Calvin Tomkins wrote that Cage was initially somewhat alarmed by the violent energy of Paik’s acoustic and performance piece, Hommage à John Cage, a few years later it would be Beuys who would push the work even further. [3] “Meeting Cage had been a decisive event for Paik, and it had given him the freedom to compose a piece like Hommage à John Cage which concluded with the intention of ‘overthrowing’ the piano. Indeed, his motto from those years was: ‘The piano is a taboo that must be destroyed.’” In an exhibition in Wuppertal, Paik showed four prepared pianos and the little-known Beuys destroyed one of them, a defiant act even Paik had never accomplished. [4] Cage, Paik, and Beuys would become lifelong friends and collaborators. When an interviewer asked Beuys what artists he was closest to, he answered, “John Cage. These concepts are not alien to him.” [5]
Notes:
[1] Arthur C. Danto, “Foreword: Style and Salvation in the Art of Beuys,” in Joseph Beuys: The Reader (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007), xv.
[2] Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1981), 382–383.
[3] Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant-Garde (New York: The Viking Press, 1962), 134.
[4] Edith Decker-Phillips, Paik Video, translated from the German (Barrytown, NY: Institute for Publishing Arts, 1997), 159.
[5] Chris Thompson, Felt: Fluxus, Joseph Beuys, and the Dalai Lama (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 124.
ProvenanceFrom 1984
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by the American Art Foundation through The Pace Gallery, New York on March 20, 1984. [1]
Notes:
[1] Letter, March 20, 1984, object file.
Exhibition History
DepartmentAmerican Art
Untitled
Artist
Joseph Beuys
(1921 - 1986)
Date1982
Mediumsilkscreen in colors on two sheets matted as a single image
DimensionsFrame: 40 1/4 x 32 in. (102.2 x 81.3 cm)
Paper (each sheet): 13 1/2 x 10 in. (34.3 x 25.4 cm)
SignedJoseph Beuys
Credit LineGift of the American Art Foundation
Copyright© 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Object number1984.2.1.d
DescriptionJoseph Beuys was a politically conscious artist who used his art—mostly large-scale installations and performances—to convey his position on contemporary issues. He was involved for a short while with Fluxus, an interdisciplinary movement which often relied on performance pieces and texts. His Untitled print, alternately titled : Quanten, is a silkscreen comprised of two images in a double mat with octagonal openings that resemble a photograph held in place with photo corners. It was included in A Portfolio of 13 Prints, published by Jonas Mekas for Anthology Film Archives, New York, and was printed at Porter-Weiner Studios, New York.The silkscreen is printed in two colors: gray, for the notation marks which replicate graphite, and gold. The left pane of the composition shows three columns, two running the full height of the picture plane and the third only about one-fifth of the other columns. The gilt ink obliterates most of the notations in the three columns with numbers that are visible immediately to the right. These are not meaningful to the casual observer, although they most certainly fit in with Beuys’s style of drawing, which the critic Arthur Danto describes as “unmistakably his, blobs and blots in sepia or brown, on throwaway paper, and connected by some desultory scribbled lines.” [1]
On the right side appears a column of words and phrases in German, most illegible, due to Beuys’s uneven handwriting. Examples of legible words are: Pilze, buch, pelt, Eichel, felsen, fels which translate as fungi, book, pelt, acorn, rock, cliff. These allude to aspects of the physical world, which was central to Beuys’s education, art production, and sociopolitical consciousness. The irascible critic Robert Hughes said of the artist, “His obsessive interest in shamanism and the invocation of animal totems—hare, bee, stag, and the like, scribbled out in countless drawings, molded in wax, and scratched on slate—has much more to do with the pantheism of earlier twentieth-century northern romantics like Klee or Franz Marc than it does with real anthropology, despite Beuys’s insistence on the need for an ‘anthropological’ art which could give ordinary human actions the character of ritual.” [2]
Beuys signed his name and annotated the print directly on the lower right of the image. Presumably the other signatures, found on the right side of the image, were printed: his initials J. b [sic], his full name “Joseph Beuys: Quanten 1945,” which gives title to the image, below which is written “to John Cage with love and admiration. Joseph.” “Quanten” translated from German means quantum, the smallest amount of energy, an indirect allusion to the atomic bomb. It was in 1945 that Germany surrendered and Beuys became a prisoner of war in England.
Joseph Beuys met and became aware of the work of the American avant-garde composer John Cage through the Fluxus art group, specifically through the artist Nam June Paik, in the early 1960s. Paik was still a composer when he attended a 1958 John Cage performance in Darmstadt, which would prove transformative for him; afterwards he would emerge as a performance artist. Although Calvin Tomkins wrote that Cage was initially somewhat alarmed by the violent energy of Paik’s acoustic and performance piece, Hommage à John Cage, a few years later it would be Beuys who would push the work even further. [3] “Meeting Cage had been a decisive event for Paik, and it had given him the freedom to compose a piece like Hommage à John Cage which concluded with the intention of ‘overthrowing’ the piano. Indeed, his motto from those years was: ‘The piano is a taboo that must be destroyed.’” In an exhibition in Wuppertal, Paik showed four prepared pianos and the little-known Beuys destroyed one of them, a defiant act even Paik had never accomplished. [4] Cage, Paik, and Beuys would become lifelong friends and collaborators. When an interviewer asked Beuys what artists he was closest to, he answered, “John Cage. These concepts are not alien to him.” [5]
Notes:
[1] Arthur C. Danto, “Foreword: Style and Salvation in the Art of Beuys,” in Joseph Beuys: The Reader (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007), xv.
[2] Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1981), 382–383.
[3] Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant-Garde (New York: The Viking Press, 1962), 134.
[4] Edith Decker-Phillips, Paik Video, translated from the German (Barrytown, NY: Institute for Publishing Arts, 1997), 159.
[5] Chris Thompson, Felt: Fluxus, Joseph Beuys, and the Dalai Lama (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 124.
ProvenanceFrom 1984
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by the American Art Foundation through The Pace Gallery, New York on March 20, 1984. [1]
Notes:
[1] Letter, March 20, 1984, object file.
Exhibition History
Status
Not on viewCollections